1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an industrial robot for use in work transportation, and more particularly to a system for graphically displaying time taken for an industrial robot to move a work from an arbitrary travel starting point.
2. Background Art
Industrial robots are increasingly introduced into factories these days for transportation of products and works. The typical usage of industrial robots is transportation, and a common industrial robot for transportation holds a product or a work with an end effector and transports it from a starting point to an objective point. When planning a work transportation by means of an industrial robot, it is necessary to determine a starting point and an objective point and, in addition, a transport route between the starting point and the objective point.
The determination of starting point and objective point in work transportation by means of an industrial robot, in most cases, has been made in a rough manner. For instance, after designating the position of a belt conveyor and determining the point of arrival of a work, the starting and objective points are roughly determined accordingly.
On the other hand, an industrial robot needs to be instructed of a work traveling route, and setting and change of a transport route generally requires a time-consuming processing. An industrial robot has therefore been proposed which enables a simple processing for the setting of transport route, as disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2001-71287. According to the conventional technique, the setting of transport route with the shortest traveling route can be made by simply moving or stopping an end effector and inputting the position from a teaching box.
In transportation by a robot, there is a case in which with the same distance between starting point and objective point, a difference in the operating time of the robot in transportation, and thus a difference in the transport time, can be produced by a difference in the position of starting point or objective point. Thus, the transport efficiency can be high or low depending upon how to select the positions of starting and objective points even when the transport distance is the same.
In the setting of work transport route for a conventional industrial robot, technical attention has been paid exclusively to how to set traveling route rather than how to determine starting and objective points. Accordingly, technical approach has not yet been made to, for example, a method for determining appropriate starting and objective points from the viewpoint of enhancing transport efficiency.